Old and New

Last night was our "old and new" dinner. It is sort of an unofficial tradition, a head nod among lengthening busy days, as we use the last of winter's storage and combine it with spring's first crops.

We used up the last of our winter squash,  a Spaghetti Squash turned into pizza earlier in the week, and there was only one lonely pumpkin left. We collected parsnips, greens (spinach, lovage, dandelion, chard, kale & chive) and fiddleheads from the spring garden and turned the pumpkin into curry soup and muffins for our Old/New Dinner.

We are already feeling well-fed again by our little farm, with abundant eggs and ample meat, greens, herbs and parsnips. We feel such gratitude for this little slice of paradise!

Dream Seeds

Last night, in my dreams, my Maine neighbor opened a mail package. It was filled with seed packets. She was bright and happy and excited to begin a new cycle of sprouting potential and possibilities into a nourishing reality.  Yesterday, here, a half world away, I pushed tiny seeds into wind-dried soil, and wondered about place, roots, deepening, and growth. In keeping with the Law of Attraction, this was posted on Facebook yesterday:

If in Maine, I would be browsing seed catalogs, sketching the vegetable beds, and maybe thinking about which new trees to tap and what to start in the greenhouse. Here, I am trying to understand this soil and to understand why something that looks so obviously easy (growing food near the equator) is so darn hard.
I think, it took me years to get the Nancy Place soil to where it is now, it took me years to understand the subtleties of growing in a Northern Climate. The Earth gives easily, but not without care, patience, and relationship. Here, I am still a spectator to the rich life around me. I walk through one of the most amazing ecosystems in this wide world, and I watch, I listen. I harvest bananas from my backyard-- but I do nothing except to take. It takes commitment to build a relationship with the cycles of nature; it takes seeking, listening, yearning. Here we walk in a temple-- honoring, loving, and being constantly amazed at the glory around us. Which place is deepening us? Which place is growing us tall? We are filled with more questions as we reach for answers. The seeds are planted: roots grow down; leaves grow up and out. These are things we know-- where ever we go.

Eat Your Art.

Bending in the hoop house, sweating, I am overcome by the beauty of a leaf of lettuce. It is spotted, no motled, with maroon over an army-green leaf. It is glistening sunlight off drops of water. I look around, suddenly acutely aware of the leaf of kale, beaded with water and the pattern of the spinach, the flowering arugala; the bolting cilantro. . . all of it, Art.



Nature is art – everywhere spiraling forth into new life or decaying into new patterns. In the garden, we get to play with Nature’s canvas—we get to pretend that we are the artist.



How many times have I waited too long to harvest—let the prime pass by because I was too obsessed with watching the act of art—the actual action of art. The growing, unfurling, shooting forth—the intricate patterns and the way the palette mixes on the canvas in forms of insects, water, dust, light. . . .It hit me how often I have let the lettuce turn bitter or the arugala seed just for this reason—for this obsession with observation. But now, I’m realizing that this gift of playing artist, this gift that is alone for the gardener; the steward—is the gift of consuming art. Yes! We get to make the art a part of us! We then become not just artist, but also the art itself—in its ever-unraveling process of becoming. What a gift it is to be a gardener. Go ahead, eat your art!

Underlying

Defined:

implicit in(p): in the nature of something though not readily apparent

located beneath or below

fundamental: being or involving basic facts or principles

A bean, a seed, all filled with the potential of the world. Implicit in a seed is not only its potential  but also its pattern or path to completion. The seed does not have to think much about it, as far as we know, it just is, it just does. A little water, a little soil and . . . magic. A teacher, a guide. . . a seed is an example of the reaching toward entelechy, which, according to Aristotle, is the condition of something whose essence is fully realized; actuality. The garden offers so much to meditate on. If only I could quiet my mind!

We have been shelling the dry beans, Jacob's Cattle. This was probably one of those things to do in October, but no one has touched them since the last of our CouchSurfers passed through. Now my youngest daughter has been doing her chore time with a focus on getting this done. Still one grocery bag to go, and then on to the soybeans.

The continual craving for depth, insight to soul, and the desire to impact the positive is enough to drive one to a fevered, crazy edge. Particularly in the gray of January. Hope is sparse, moods are dull. . . The little empty pots are beckoning with longing. The soil warms. The air today smells of sap season, the roots stir. . . remembering.